Thursday, 6 February 2014

GPO AND LOC INCREASE TRANSPARENTCY TO CONGRESSIONAL INFORMATION

The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has partnered with the Library of Congress (LOC) to make House of Representatives bill summaries available in XML format for bulk data download from GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys). Bill summaries are prepared by the LOC’s Congressional Research Service and describe the most significant provisions of a piece of legislation. They also detail the effects the legislative text may have on current law and Federal programs. The bill summaries are part of FDsys’ Bulk Data repository starting with the 113th Congress. Making House bill summaries available in XML permits data to be reused and repurposed for mobile web applications, data mashups, and other analytical tools by third party providers, which contributes to openness and transparency in Government. GPO already makes House bills as well as the Federal Register, the Code of Federal Regulations, and other documents from the executive branch available in XML format for bulk data download. You can view the House bill summaries on FDsys here.